Stanley Elkin - The MacGuffin

“Hey,” Charles said, “that’s how I feel about my prom.”

“All right,” the City Commissioner of Streets said graciously, “I take your point.”

“I can never lose my cherry again,” Charles said.

“Well, Jesus,” Druff said, “see what I mean? You could go on forever. Tell me, did you ever have mumps?”

“Sure.”

“Well, you’ll never get them again. You’re through with mumps. Mumps are out of your life. When I mentioned that about hitchhiking it was with some awe, a certain sense of wonder. No,” Druff said, “I’m not going to sit here and tell you I ain’t going back to Capistrano. I’ve never been to Capistrano, and if I ever do get there it will be as a tourist. It’d be another thing altogether if I were a swallow.”

“Got you,” Charles told him agreeably. “You give me the prom but I have to take back my cherry.”

“Well, it isn’t a contest,” Druff said. “As I say, what I offered was by way of wonder and wistfulness. I was catching my breath, I was rubbing my eyes.

“I mean it’s more than likely I’ve made my last move. I mean Social Security is practically around the corner, but I won’t be retiring to Phoenix or Florida. Whatever happens. Of course I could always end up in a home, or die in a hospital bed, but it’s a surefire, lead-pipe cinch we won’t be selling our house and moving into a condo.”

“You have a house.”

“A nice house.”

“A nice house,” Charles said. “Kids?”

“My share,” Druff said neutrally.

“And you’re telling me that with grown, settled kids, probably raising families of their own by now, you and your wife are willing to go on living in a house way too big for just the two of you? I don’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“What do you need all that responsibility for?”

“It’s comfortable,” Druff said. “Living in a big house is comfortable.”

“It’s a lot of work.”

“I’m not talking about Buckingham Palace. I’m talking about a nice, comfortable house.”

“More than six rooms?”

“Living room, dining room, kitchen, den. Three bedrooms, screened- in breezeway, two and a half baths. A finished basement.”

“Is there a garage?”

“Sure there’s a garage. There’s a swimming pool.”

Charles looked at him. “Aboveground?”

“No. In-ground.”

“It’s too much.”

“We have a small garden. Well, my wife does.”

“It’s too much.”

“It’s not too much.”

“All that upkeep?”

“She could get a high school kid to come in once a week to do the gardening. We could close off a couple of bedrooms. We can shut down the dining room and take our meals in the kitchen. We could drain the pool, let the backyard reclaim it. And we don’t actually need the den or that second full bath. We don’t use them that much now, if you want to know. And let me tell you something else. When it becomes too much for us to drag ourselves down to the finished basement we’ll probably be finished ourselves, and a sure thing for the home anyway. So you can forget all that crap about upkeep. Upkeep’s the least of it. Upkeep is trivial. It’s upheaval kicks your ass.”

“Well,” Charles said uncertainly, “I don’t know.”

“Because you’re young,” Druff said. “When you’re my age, you’ll feel differently about it. Not so quick on the trigger to make major, irrevocable changes.”

“It’s sure possible,” Charles said.

They’d had a good talk, Druff thought. He’d settled important things with Charles that he and Rose Helen had yet even to discuss. Of course there was a certain flaw in his logic — the fallacy of the unmentionable middle or somesuch. He hadn’t said anything about Mikey. That they might just have to move out on him in the middle of the night when the kid wasn’t looking. Even so it had been a good talk. A wonderful talk. This was the stuff people without MacGuffins talked about. (This happens, too, thought the man with the MacGuffin.)

Becalmed, they drifted awhile longer in the slow, heavy traffic. (People coming back from beauty parlor appointments, from high school sporting events, from visiting relatives in hospitals, from errands, from shopping, from making arrangements, from returning things to department stores, too small or too large, stuff which on second thought they didn’t really want to own, that was too expensive, too much trouble to maintain.) Druff gazing lazily into the traffic from the height of the cab, staring down into the laps of women. His ride as abstracted as himself, becoming engaged with the traffic, alternately pressing his gas pedal, his brakes; rapt as someone fishing as he touched his pickup’s controls.

And Druff, who couldn’t get over it, trying to recall the last time he’d had a conversation that didn’t sound like dialogue in a book. He couldn’t do it. Well I’m a politician, he thought, I have enemies. I’m an enemy myself. Enemies can turn just about anything into a federal case. We’re all Sturm and Drang, enemies. We’re too excitable by half. We make life a big deal. And had to admit it was pleasant, doing the time of day with Charles — all that real estate chat, his dining room plots and plans. And wondered about the laid-back life. Nah, he thought, it ain’t good enough. I couldn’t live like that. Hey, I am what I am. A fellow has to give in to his fiction.

“Awfully considerate,” Druff said. “You picking me up like that back there. You saved my life.”

“No problem,” Charles said, “don’t mention it.”

“No, really,” Druff said.

“That time of day, that kind of neighborhood? I won’t tell you you could have called your shots a little better.”

“There wasn’t much I could do, really,” said Druff, opening his book, finding his place. “I don’t use my limousine on weekends.”

“Maid’s day off?”

“Maids is right. There are two of them.”

“Two maids,” Charles said.

“Well, chauffeurs.”

“Yeah,” said Charles, “chauffeurs. That’s what I meant.”

“It’s pretty ironic. I was just coming back from paying a call on one of my drivers. We had words. Or anyway I did. He tried to pretend nothing happened. To be perfectly frank, I didn’t think of it, but even if I had I was in no frame of mind to ask my chauffeur if I could use his phone to call a cab.”

“No, of course not.”

Druff understood Charles thought he was crazy, he understood none of this was any of his business. He didn’t care. He didn’t hold with secrets. And anyway, if something untoward really did happen to him, he was marking the trees, laying a trail. “So thanks for picking me up back there.”

“I told you,” Charles said, “I slowed for the suit. I didn’t see you in it. I didn’t see anyone in it.”

Right, Druff thought, that’s just what I was telling my tailor. “Anywhere around here will be fine,” he said.

“You sure? Because this isn’t the sort of place you described. I mean it’s all elevator buildings. It don’t seemed zoned for neighborhood.”

“Oh, I don’t live around here.”

“No.”

“Thought I’d drop in on my mistress.”

Charles stopped his pickup at the curb and Druff carefully let himself out. Before shutting the door he turned back. “Charles, listen to me,” he said. “I’m not naming names because maybe I’ve got it all wrong and I’m in the clear. Habeas corpus, know what I mean? I’m fifty-eight years old. A lot of this could be glandular, a figment. Maybe all of it is. Nobody followed us. Now I know that’s not worth the paper. I mean, you don’t actually have to follow people. Not when you can phone ahead. Shit, Charley, I’m fifty-eight. My itinerary ain’t hard. Limo guy number one, limo guy number two. My kid, my wife, and a lady who makes it with ghosts.